Overview

This section contains resources that help health centers to successfully implement EHRs, including leadership teams needed, workflow adoption, transitioning between EHRs, meaningful use, and patient safety issues.

Implementing EHR
Health Center Health IT/ EHR Assessment Tool

Health Center Health IT/ EHR Assessment Tool

For PCAs and HCCNs to Assess Health IT across Multiple Health Centers; Updated in 2019

HITEQ created this template to assist HCCNs, PCAs, or other organizations in conducting health IT assessments of multiple health centers. The questions within this instrument were adopted from proposed UDS health IT capabilities questions and the HITEQ Center's Meaningful Use readiness assessment survey. This instrument may include some questions that are more comprehensive than some organizations need, but a secondary goal is to ease future responses to UDS and other health IT-related surveys.

  • The 1st tab (Introduction) is an introduction and general instructions for this instrument. 
  • The 2nd tab (A. Basic Info) captures basic information that describes each health center. 
  • The 3rd tab (B. CMS EHR Incentive Program) consolidates questions needed to plan for, assess, and respond to CMS EHR Incentive Program.
  • The 4th tab (C. Reporting) focuses on functionalities and abilities to create reports for both internal and external use. 
  • The 5th tab (D. HIE) enumerates interoperability-related functionalities and environment. 
  • The 6th tab (E. Patient Access) captures several areas related to patient access to financial and clinical information, including Patient Portal. 

How to use this tool:

  1. You may choose to start by viewing the videos linked above, or in the links section below.
  2. This tool is formatted with questions (and descriptions of expected responses) in Column A. Each sheet is pre-formatted for up to 5 health centers (Column B to F), and organizations surveying more than 5 health centers can simply cut and paste additional columns as needed.
  3. A potential usage scenario is for the organization (HCCN, PCA,etc.) to instruct each health center to complete the survey using column B. The organization can then collect completed surveys and simply cut and paste responses from each health center into a different column.
  4. The user is expected to respond to all the cell with the LIGHT ORANGE background. For your convenience, all other cells are blocked from writing. Should you need to unlock the spreadsheet for edits, the password is HITEQ.
  5. Please note that some questions in sections C, D, and E have corresponding questions in section B, CMS EHR Incentive Program, and should be answered there.
  6. Some cells are limited to appropriate answer types for your convenience (e.g., >=0, date ranges, Y/N, etc.)

Download the tool below. Please contact HITEQ to request support in implementing this instrument; we are looking for additional opportunities to test this instrument and provide technical assistance at no cost. We also welcome any feedback you have!

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Acknowledgements

This resource collection was compiled by the HITEQ Center staff with guidance from HITEQ Advisory Committee members and collaborators of the HITEQ Center.